Inside the McCarthy-McConnell relationship

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In today’s edition …  The difficult task of filling out committee rosters ... What the Jan. 6 probe found out about social media, but didn’t report … Drip, drip, drip: House Republicans seek information on classified material at Biden residence ... Pentagon’s top general meets Ukrainians training with U.S. troops … but first …

On the Hill

Inside the McCarthy-McConnell relationship

© Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speak with the press following a meeting With President Biden on May 12, 2021. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

By the time House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) arrived in Washington in 2007, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had been in office for decades. By the time McCarthy became the House Republican leader in 2019, McConnell had been the top Senate Republican for 12 years.

Now that they’ll lead Republicans in their respective chambers, the two leaders’ styles and goals could diverge this Congress. 

McCarthy will steer the GOP agenda and face pressure from his right flank to pass conservative bills that are unlikely to make it through the Senate. As Senate minority leader, McConnell will play the role of foil or negotiator — probably both — in the Democratic-led Senate. 

The ability of the long-serving Senate Republican leader and the newly elected speaker — “who associates say have a good, professional but not close, personal relationship — to work together takes on new significance as a series of high-stakes fiscal showdowns loom in Congress,” our colleagues Liz Goodwin and Marianna Sotomayor report.

• “The duo’s colleagues say they could not be more different. McCarthy, a prolific fundraiser and Californian leading a majority for the first time, is a ‘cheerleader,’ backslapping type, said Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who has served in both chambers with both men. But McConnell, who recently became the longest-serving Senate party leader in history, keeps his cards notoriously close to his chest and has a reputation as a master strategist.”
• “’Mitch is more of an enigma,’ said Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.). ‘I saw him smile once back in 2017.’”
• The common denominator: their relentless determination to win elections: “I think they’re kindred spirit in a political sense,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who also has served in both chambers with both men. “They’re just in a different spot.”

Inside the relationship

McConnell met weekly with John A. Boehner and Paul D. Ryan during their tenures as House speaker.

But the sphinx-like Kentuckian’s “meetings with McCarthy have been less frequent, as both men have been in the minority in their chambers and covid disrupted the congressional schedule, according to former and current aides, who, like others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about internal matters,” Liz and Marianna report. “They plan to meet more frequently now that McCarthy is speaker.”

• Ryan “and McConnell became personal friends when they ran the House and Senate, respectively, going out to dinner with their wives frequently and enjoying a mutual trust that came in part from how intertwined their staffs were. (Ryan’s chief of staff at the time had worked for McConnell previously.)”
• “McConnell and McCarthy are less close, but a former Senate aide said the minority leader doesn’t need a close personal connection to work well with his counterparts.”
• “‘People get way too hung up on buddy movies in Congress and with McConnell that’s just not a thing,’ the former aide said. ‘He wants to get the work done, he wants to win.’”

The Biden factor

McConnell served for 24 years in the Senate with President Biden and recently appeared with him in Kentucky at an event celebrating the infrastructure law that McConnell helped pass in 2021 and that Biden signed into law.

Biden and McCarthy have less of a relationship.

While the two men used to meet for breakfasts at the Naval Observatory while Biden was vice president, they found their relationship strained by McCarthy’s support of challenges to Biden’s 2020 election victory, our colleague Michael Scherer reports. 

Biden mentioned McConnell at the start of his inaugural address in 2021, but not McCarthy — and McCarthy noticed. (A White House aide told Scherer the omission was unintentional.)

“McCarthy’s closest Democratic working relationship has been with former House majority leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), who he has called ‘a very good friend,’” Michael writes.

• “Hoyer said he knows McCarthy is a leader who Democrats can work with, though he is unsure whether McCarthy will be able to reach out for Democratic support as [Boehner and Ryan] did given the narrow GOP majority in the House and the demands of McCarthy’s most conservative members.”
• “’Biden’s inclination, as we all know, is to work in a bipartisan way and to reach out to the other side and try to work to a mutually agreed compromise,’ Hoyer said. ‘I think McCarthy is prepared to do that, but he has a very difficult time within his own party, both in the Congress and outside groups, in thinking that that is a good thing for the country.’”

The Trump factor

Maybe the biggest difference between McCarthy and McConnell is their relationship with former president Donald Trump.

“McCarthy publicly thanked Trump for helping him secure his Speaker’s bid with phone calls to holdouts after a historic 14 failed votes earlier this month,” Liz and Marianna write. “In contrast, McConnell has not spoken to the president in more than two years, since Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 loss, and has said he believes Trump’s influence boosting more extreme Senate candidates contributed to Republicans’ underwhelming performance in the midterms.

• McCarthy was skeptical of McConnell’s choice to cut Trump off entirely and believes that he ended up with better candidates in the midterms than McConnell did because he continued to work with the ex-president and shape his influence on GOP primaries, according to a person familiar with McCarthy’s thinking. (Several more extreme House Republican candidates lost in competitive seats, as well, however, including Joe Kent in Washington and John Gibbs in Michigan.)”
• “McConnell needs to understand the difficulties McCarthy faces in the House keeping his small majority together, Ryan said. ‘His job is harder than mine [was],’ Ryan said of the Speaker. ‘No two ways about it.’”

Also of note: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) is joining the Senate Republican leadership team as counselor. Read Liz’s profile of the Republican who wants to be a bipartisan dealmaker.

The difficult task of filling out committee rosters

© Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-Tex.) is set to lead the panel through a difficult challenge this year. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Even though the House is out this week, Republicans and Democrats are working to populate their committees. 

On the Democratic side, some members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are sending out warning signals. Democrats will have fewer slots now that they’re in the minority, meaning some lawmakers will lose committee assignments. Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) could lose his spot on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, our colleague Marianna tells us, leaving potentially just one Latino lawmaker on the Democratic side, Rep. Linda T. Sánchez (Calif.). 

A House Democratic aide said no committee assignments are yet final. Democrats hope to fill the seats “soon.” 

Meanwhile, the Republican Steering Committee, which makes committee assignments, met on Monday, a federal holiday, to work on committees and will continue their work today. 

Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-Tex.) announced subcommittee chairs on Monday, noting that Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) will be the panel’s vice chairman. Cole, a key McCarthy ally, is also head of the Rules Committee, giving the veteran lawmaker major influence this Congress. 

Granger and the Appropriations subcommittee chairs will have a ton of pressure on them to meet conservatives’ spending reduction demands — including rolling back spending to fiscal year 2022 levels (which is a massive spending cut, by the way).

The Investigations

What the Jan. 6 probe found out about social media, but didn’t report

© John Minchillo/AP A memo circulated among Jan. 6 committee members but not publicly released said that tech platforms failed to heed employees’ warnings about violent rhetoric ahead of the 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol. (John Minchillo/AP)

On the cutting-room floor: “The Jan. 6 committee spent months gathering stunning new details on how social media companies failed to address the online extremism and calls for violence that preceded the Capitol riot,” our colleagues Cat Zakrzewski, Cristiano Lima and Drew Harwell report. “But in the end, committee leaders declined to delve into those topics in detail in their final report, reluctant to dig into the roots of domestic extremism taking hold in the Republican Party and concerned about the risks of a public battle with powerful tech companies.”

• What ‘Team Purple’ discovered: “Congressional investigators found evidence that tech platforms — especially Twitter — failed to heed their own employees’ warnings about violent rhetoric on their platforms and bent their rules to avoid penalizing conservatives, particularly then-president Donald Trump, out of fear of reprisals. The draft report details how most platforms did not take ‘dramatic’ steps to rein in extremist content until after the attack on the Capitol, despite clear red flags across the internet.”
• Why it matters: “Understanding the role social media played in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol takes on greater significance as tech platforms [such as Twitter] undo some of the measures they adopted to prevent political misinformation on their platforms.”

At the White House

Drip, drip, drip: House Republicans seek information on classified material at Biden residence

© Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post President Biden makes his way to the Oval Office on Jan. 16. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

Meanwhile, the fallout continues after classified documents were discovered in Biden’s home and the Penn Biden Center office. “The White House on Monday said it does not keep visitors logs for President Biden’s personal residence in Wilmington, Del., where his lawyers have discovered at least six documents with classified markings,” our colleague Yasmeen Abutaleb reports.

• The response came after “Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to the White House over the weekend seeking an accounting of who may have had access to the property.”
  • “President Biden’s mishandling of classified materials raises the issue of whether he has jeopardized our national security,” Comer wrote in his letter to the White House. “Without a list of individuals who have visited his residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents.”
• “President Biden’s mishandling of classified materials raises the issue of whether he has jeopardized our national security,” Comer wrote in his letter to the White House. “Without a list of individuals who have visited his residence, the American people will never know who had access to these highly sensitive documents.”
• “The demands by Republicans for transparency in the case of Biden’s classified documents highlight the political danger for the president, who criticized Trump when boxes of classified records were found at his Florida residence,” the New York Times’s Michael D. Shear writes. “But Biden’s Republican critics, like Comer, are seeking transparency in ways they have not for Trump.”

On the agenda: Biden will meet with Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands this morning in the Oval Office. Rutte will have lunch with Vice President Harris, who will stick around to welcome the Golden State Warriors to the White House this afternoon in recognition of the 2022 championship. (Recall that Stephen Curry and the Warriors did not go to the White House to celebrate their 2017 and 2018 wins.)

Biden is set to visit California’s Central Coast on Thursday to see the devastation wrought by recent storms. He’ll be back at the White House on Friday to meet with mayors attending the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

At the Pentagon

Pentagon’s top general meets Ukrainians training with U.S. troops

© Staff Sgt. Jordan Sivayavirojna/AP Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, meets with U.S. Army leaders responsible for training Ukrainian forces at Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany on Monday.

Our colleague Dan Lamothe was one of three American journalists who got to shadow Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Germany on Monday as he spoke to Ukrainian troops. Read his dispatch: 

• Milley “visited two sites in Germany used by the U.S. military to enhance the fighting skills of their Ukrainian counterparts, offering encouragement to those on the training field and directing the American soldiers instructing them to squeeze as much as possible into the newly established program before the Ukrainians return to war.”
• “In temperatures hovering under 40 degrees, Milley bantered with the Ukrainian soldiers and asked about their backgrounds and experience in combat, sometimes in English and sometimes through an interpreter. Their mission is urgent, Milley noted, and has international support. The conversations were punctuated by occasional gunfire, as Ukrainian soldiers nearby honed their skills with rifles and the M240B machine gun.”

The Data

The American-made combat vehicle headed to Ukraine, visualized: “Ukraine’s Western allies announced this month plans to provide the country with new fighting vehicles, the first of which are slated to arrive in the coming months,” our colleague Claire Parker reports.

• The United States will send 50 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, an American-made combat vehicle used in the Gulf and Iraq Wars. It’s “designed to carry a three-person crew and six soldiers as passengers, especially across open terrain” and “can be armed with an antitank TOW (‘tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided’) missile launcher.”

The Media

Early reeeads

From us: 

• How dark money groups led Ohio to redefine gas as ‘green energy.’ By Maxine Joselow.
• New details link George Santos to cousin of sanctioned Russian oligarch. By Isaac Stanley-Becker and Rosalind S. Helderman.
• Recent shootings raise stakes for pro-gun lobbyists in Richmond. By Gregory S. Schneider and Laura Vozzella.

From across the web: 

• Former Republican candidate arrested in shootings targeting Democratic politicians’ homes. By the Albuquerque Journal’s Elise Kaplan, Ryan Boetel and Jessica Dyer.
• Five mayoral races to watch in 2023. By the Hill’s Caroline Vakil.
• Blinken to test limits of China’s diplomatic engagement on Feb. 5-6 Beijing trip. By Politico’s Phelim Kine.
• Some Republicans seek ouster of RNC chair once backed by Trump. By the Wall Street Journal’s John McCormick.
• TikTok Tries to Win Allies in the U.S. With More Transparency. By the Wall Street Journal’s Georgia Wells and Stu Woo.

Viral

Thanks for reading. You can also follow us on Twitter: @theodoricmeyer and @LACaldwellDC.